THEY REACHED THE CITY IN THE LATE AFTER-noon, 1650 by Carlos's check, and prepared to drop out over a deserted lot. Apparently there was an under-ground facility or somesuch nearby, owned by Um-brella; at least that's what they had been told at the briefing. Carlos got in line with his squad, assault rifle slung over his shoulder as he hooked himself to the drop line and waited for Hirami to open the door. Directly in front of Carlos was Randy Thomas, one of the friend-lier guys in A squad. Randy glanced back at him and pretend-growled, pointing his forefinger and thumb at Carlos, a mock-gun. Carlos grinned, then clutched his gut as if shot. Stupid shit, but Carlos found himself re-laxing a little as their leader pulled the door open and the roar of multiple choppers filled the cabin.

Two by two, the men in front of Carlos slid down the dual rappelling lines anchored to the body of the heli-copter. Carlos stepped closer to the opening, squinting against the whipping wind to see where they'd be land-ing. Their 'copter cast a long shadow in the late-day sun and he could see men from the other platoons on the ground, lining up by squad. Then it was his turn; he stepped out a second after Randy, the thrill of the prac-tical free fall sending his stomach into his chest. A blur of passing sky, and he touched down, unhooking from the line and hurrying to where Hirami stood. A few minutes later, they were all down. Almost in unison, the four transport 'copters swung west and buzzed away, their noise fading as dust settled around the assembled troops. Carlos felt alert and ready as the squad and platoon leaders started to point in different directions, assigning routes that had been plotted before they'd left the field office. Finally, as the helicopters grew smaller, they could hear again  - and Carlos was struck by the silence of their surroundings. No cars, no industrial sounds at all, and yet they were at the edge of a decent-sized city. Weird, how one took those noises for granted, not noticing them at all until they weren't there. Mikhail Victor, platoon D's supervisor, stood quietly with Hirami and his other two squad leaders, Cryan and that creepy Russian, while the supervisors of A, B, and C platoons gave directions, the squads moving out briskly and with a minimum of noise. Their bootsteps seemed overly loud in the still air, and Carlos saw looks of vague unease on some of the passing faces, a look he knew he wore. Probably it was so quiet 'cause people were at home sick, or holed up somewhere, but it was kind of eerie anyway, the stillness... "A squad, double-time!" Hirami called, and even his voice seemed oddly muted, but Carlos put it out of his mind as they started jogging after him. If his mem-ory served from the briefing, they were all headed roughly west, into the heart of Raccoon City, the pla-toons fanning out to cover the greatest area. Within a hundred yards, squad A was on its own, thirty soldiers jogging through an industrial area not so different than the one that their field office was in; run-down lots strewn with trash, weedy patches of dirt, fenced stor-age units. Carlos scowled, unable to keep quiet. "Fuchi," he said, half under his breath. Smelled like a fart in a bag full of fish. Randy lagged back a few steps to run alongside Car-los. "You say something, bro?" "I said something stinks," Carlos muttered. "You

smell that?"Randy nodded. "Yeah. Thought it was you."Ha, ha, you kill me, cabraln." Carlos smiledsweetly. "That means 'good friend,' by the way."Randy grinned. "Yeah, I bet. And I bet..."Hold up! And shut up, back there!"

Hirami called a stop, holding one hand up to ensure silence. Faintly, Carlos could hear another squad a block or two north, the beat of their boots on pavement. And after a second, he could hear something else. Moans and groans, coming from somewhere ahead of them, faint at first but getting louder. Like a hospital population had been kicked out into the street. At the same time, the bad smell was getting stronger, worse and familiar, like... "Oh, shit," Randy whispered, his face paling, and Carlos knew at once what the smell was, just as Randy must know.

Not possible.

It was the smell of a human body rotting in the sun. It was death. Carlos knew it well enough, but never had it been so huge, so all-encompassing. In front of them, Mitch Hirami was lowering his hand uncertainly, a look of deep concern in his eyes. The distressed, wordless sounds of people in pain were getting louder. Hirami seemed about to speak...... when gunfire erupted from nearby, from one of the other squads, and in between the blasts of automatic fire that ripped through the afternoon air, Carlos could hear men screaming. "Line!" Hirami shouted, holding up both hands with the palms turned to the sky, his voice barely audible over the stutter of bullets. Straight line, five men facing front, five back the way they'd come. Carlos ran to get in position, his mouth suddenly dry, his hands damp. The short bursts of auto-matic fire just north of their position were getting longer, drowning out whatever else there was to hear, but the stench was definitely getting worse. To cap his worries, he could hear distant fire, soft, clattering pops behind the closer blasts; whatever was going on, it sounded like all of the U.B.C.S. was engaged. Carlos faced front, rifle ready, searching the empty street that stretched out in front of them and T-ed three blocks ahead. An M16 loaded with a thirty-round mag was nothing to scoff at, but he was afraid  - of what, he didn't know yet.

Why are they still firing over there, what takes that many bullets? What is it...

Carlos saw the first one, then, a staggering figure that half-fell from behind a building two blocks in front of them. A second lurched out from across the street, followed by a third, a fourth  - suddenly, at least a dozen plodding, stumbling people were in the street, coming their way. They seemed to be drunk.

"Christ, what's wrong with them, why are they walk-ing like that?"

The speaker was next to Carlos, Olson his name was, and he was facing the direction they'd come from. Car-los shot a look back and saw at least ten more reeling toward them, appearing as if out of nowhere, and he re-alized in the same moment that the gunfire north of them was dying out, the intermittent bursts fewer and further apart. Carlos faced front again and felt his jaw drop at what he saw and heard; they were close enough that he could make out individual features, their strange cries clearly audible now. Tattered, blood-stained clothing, although a few were partially naked; pallid faces stained red, with eyes that saw nothing; the way that several held their arms out, as if reaching for the line of soldiers, still a block away. And the disfigurations  - missing limbs, great hunks of skin and muscle torn off, body parts bloated and wet with putrefaction. Carlos had seen the movies. These people weren't sick. They were zombies, the walking dead, and for a moment, all he could do was watch as they tottered closer. Not possible, chale, and as his brain wrestled to accept what he was seeing, he remembered what Trent had said, about dark hours ahead. "Fire, fire!..." Hirami was screaming as if from a great distance, and the sudden, violent chatter of auto-matic weapons to either side snapped Carlos back to re-ality. He aimed at the swollen belly of a fat man wearing ripped pajama bottoms, and he fired. Three bursts, at least nine rounds smacked into the man's corpulent gut, punching a rough line across his lower belly. Dark blood splashed out, soaking the front of his pants. The man staggered but didn't fall. If any-thing, he seemed more eager to reach them, as if the smell of his own blood incited him. A few of the zombies had gone down, but they con-tinued to crawl forward on what was left of their stom-achs, scraping broken fingers across the asphalt in their single-minded purpose.

The brain, gotta get the brain, in the movies shooting them in the head is the only way... The closest was perhaps twenty feet away now, a gaunt woman who seemed untouched except for the dull glint of bone beneath her matted hair. Carlos sited the exposed skull and fired, feeling crazy relief when she went down and stayed there.

"The head, aim for the head..." Carlos shouted, but already, Hirami was screaming, wordless howls of ter-ror that were quickly joined by some of the others as their line began to dissolve.

- oh, no

From behind, the zombies had reached them.

Nicholai and Wersbowski were the only two from B to make it, and only then because they'd both taken ad-vantage where they could  - Nicholai had pushed Brett Mathis into the arms of one of the creatures when it had gotten too close, gaining a precious few seconds that had allowed him to escape. He'd seen Wersbowski shoot Li's left leg for the same reason, crippling the soldier and leaving him to distract the closest virus car-riers. Together, they made it to an apartment building's fire escape some two blocks from where the others had fallen. Gunfire tatted erratically as they climbed the rusty steps, but already the hoarse screams of dying men were fading to silence, becoming lost in the cries of the hungry damned. Nicholai weighed his options carefully as they scaled the fire escape. As he'd predicted, John Wersbowski was a survivor and obviously had no problem doing whatever was necessary to remain one; with as bad as things were in Raccoon  - worse, in fact, than Nicholai had been led to believe  - it might pay to have such a man watching his back.

And if we're surrounded, there would be someone to sacrifice so that I might get away...

Nicholai frowned as they reached the rooftop, as Wersbowski stared out at what they could see from three stories up. Unfortunately, the sacrifice element worked both ways. Besides, Wersbowski wasn't an idiot or as trusting as Mathis and Li had been; getting the drop on him could be difficult. "Zombies," Wersbowski muttered, clutching his rifle. Standing beside him, Nicholai followed his gaze to where squad B had made its last stand, at the broken bodies that littered the pavement and the creatures that continued to feed. Nicholai couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed; they'd died in minutes, hardly putting up a fight...

"So, what's the plan, sir?"

The sarcasm was obvious, both in tone and in the half amused, half disgusted expression he turned to Nicholai. Obviously, Wersbowski had seen him offer up Mathis. Nicholai sighed, shaking his head, the M16 loose in his hands; he had no choice, really. "I don't know," he said softly, and when Wersbowski looked back at where they'd fought, Nicholai squeezed the assault rifle's trigger. A trio of rounds hammered Wersbowski's abdomen, knocking him sprawling against the low cement ledge. Nicholai immediately raised the weapon and aimed at one of Wersbowski's shocked eyes, firing even as com-prehension flooded the soldier's flushed face, an aware-ness that he'd made the fatal mistake of letting his guard down. In under a second it was over, and Nicholai was alone on the rooftop. He stared blankly at the oozing body, wondering  - and not for the first time  - why he felt no guilt when he killed. He'd heard the term sociopathic before and thought that it probably ap-plied... although why people continued to see that as a negative, he didn't understand. It was the empa-thy thing, he supposed, the bulk of humanity acting as though the inability to "relate" was somehow wrong.

But nothing bothers me, and I never hesitate to do what needs to be done, no matter how it is perceived by others; what's so terrible about that?

True, he was a man who knew how to control him-self. Discipline, that was the trick. Once he'd decided to leave his homeland, within a year he didn't even think in Russian anymore. When he'd become a merce-nary, he'd trained night and day with every manner of weapon and tested his skills against the very best in the field; he'd always won, because no matter how vicious his opponent, Nicholai knew that having no conscience set him free, just as having one hindered his enemies.

This was an asset, was it not?

Wersbowski's corpse had no answer. Nicholai checked his watch, already bored with his philosophi-cal wanderings. The sun was low in the sky and it was only 1700 hours; he still had much to do if he meant to leave Raccoon with everything he needed. First, he needed to pick up a laptop and access the files he'd cre-ated only the night before, maps and names; there was supposed to be one locked up and waiting for him in the RPD building, although he'd have to be extremely careful in the area, as the two new Tyrant seekers would surely be there at some point. One was pro-grammed to find some chemical sample, and Nicholai knew there was an Umbrella lab not far from the build-ing. The other unit, the more technologically advanced creation, would be set to take out renegade S.T.A.R.S., assuming there were any still in Raccoon, and the

S.T.A.R.S. office was inside the RPD. He wouldn't be in any danger as long as he stayed out of the way, but he'd hate to get between any series of Tyrant and its target if even half of what he'd heard was true. Um-brella was taking full advantage of the Raccoon situa-tion, taking proactive steps  - using the new Tyrant models, if that's what they were, exactly  - in addition to data gathering; Nicholai admired their efficiency. Nicholai heard a fresh burst of gunfire and reflex-ively stepped back from the edge of the roof, looking down to see two soldiers run past a moment later. One was injured, a ripped, bloody patch near his right ankle, and he leaned heavily against the other for support. Nicholai couldn't identify the wounded man, but his helper was the Hispanic who'd been watching him on the helicopter. Nicholai smiled as the two stumbled past and out of sight; a few of the soldiers would have survived, of course, but they would probably suffer the same fate as the injured man, who'd almost certainly been bitten by one of the diseased.

Or the fate that surely awaits the Hispanic. I wonder, what will he do when his friend starts to get sick? When he starts to change?

Probably try to save him in some pathetic tribute to honor; it would be his undoing. Really, they were all as good as dead. Amazed by how predictable they were, Nicholai shook his head and went to get Wersbowski's ammo pack.